1. In your "The Essentials" conversation with Molly Haskell about "Gilda" (May 6 and 7) you said that an image of Gilda was painted on the atom bomb, and that there was publicity about the image at the time. The atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. "Gilda" wasn't released until 1946, so what you said cannot possibly be true.
2. In your introduction to "Hoosiers" (May 12) you said that Norman Dale (Gene Hackman) has to coach a basketball team with only five players. Every basketball team has five players. What you meant to say is that Dale has to coach a basketball squad with only five players. The actual number of the players on his squad varies as the film unfolds: it starts at seven, is reduced to five after the first practice scene, becomes six in the second practice scene, then seven when Jimmy Chitwood (Maris Valainis) decides to play, and finally grows to eight for the tournament and in the photograph in the Hickory High School gym at the end of the film, although the writer Angelo Pizzo doesn't tell us how that happened.
Jerome S. Shipman
